


hard times for dreamers (and love lost believers)

by half_a_league



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Animal Harm, Body Horror, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Monsters, Non-sexual Non-Con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_a_league/pseuds/half_a_league
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep in October Country lies the House, and within the House, the Family. Mama, Father, Uncle, Grand-père, and the children—ghost, beast, trickster, dreamer. And on the first night of fall, the dreamer slips mind to mind, looking for something, someone to hold her interest. She finds Aradia Megido.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hard times for dreamers (and love lost believers)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Ms Mr song "Bones". Much of the plot and character bases are borrowed from Ray Bradbury's From The Dust Returned, my second favorite book ever. Trigger warnings/squick warnings mentioned at all beginning chapter notes for chapters that include them and explanations for the triggers available at the end of those chapters. Chapter one contains non-sexual non-con.

The moon turned and changed and slipped from the full summer gold to the weak, splintered autumn orange, rising above fields and beckoning in the cool, sweet wind. It shined bittersweet apricot on the orchards heavy with fruit, fields full of golden wheat and fallow earth, homes burning evening lights, beds of children restless before school, resigned to books and backpacks and boredom after the long circus of summer excitement.

It shone on the clean farm house, the neatly swept porch, the empty moving truck. It shone into the uncurtained window, and across the clean sweet face of Aradia, mouth turned up in her sleep.

And it shone on the House, assaulted the House, fought the black shingles, rusted iron, cracked wooden boards of the House. And the moonlight—weak and wild and desperate—fell away from the monolith, like the moon passed behind a stray cloud. Like the House sucked away and devoured its pitiful shine.

Inside those rooms, dusty rooms, barren rooms, full rooms, all bedecked with spiderwebs and most with the owners, and swarmed with all that come in search of gloom and dark—the mice, the beetles, the skittering earwigs and centipedes, and hosts of moths that lined the ancient chests, the bare cupboard shelves, and the shadows that lurked, breathed, fell away across the corners and cracks and secret hidden spaces.

And the people, if you could call them that.

The eaters of the moonlights and drinkers of the dark silences and the owners of those puckered mouths that blow out the frightened children’s midnight candles to only luxuriate in the blackness and the screams!

They gave the House its terrible suffocating darkness—painted pitch across the grey boards and palls across the dusty windows just by standing, hunching, lying inside the rooms. A hive, a cluster, a maze of somber sunless spaces, too many for the scant few residents that haunted them year round.

But only they were there, when the moon rose and lost its nightly battle, for the other residents, those who might dare to name the House—the darkest house—as their home, were gone, all scattered across the towns, cities, countries, all too busy chasing and hunting and haunting to return for something as small, as inconsequential as the first autumn moon of the year.

So there were only six, out under the inky paper sky, watching as the water-color sunset faded away and turning as the moon rose to its throne. Six watching with critical eyes, seeing omens in the strength of the chill, the red velvet color of the clouds, the diamond sharp gleam of the stars. Six, and the dreamer upstairs, tucked with pale hair spilling across a faded pillow, and the cats, cool-eyed, sprawling across the hearth, the porch, the perpetually bare branches of the trees. 

The dreamer, and her eyes shining, dancing, from cat face to cat face, watching the moon as well. And then down the staggered line of Family, the eldest frowning, the youngest laughing with delight as she streaked through his mind.

Then the boringness of the night, of watching the moon trickle upward slowly, watching the darkness of the House grow as it ate more and more light. Back to the attic, the sand across the sheets, dust along the walls. 

Then the roof! High up, an owl that took wing, she with it—swooping tawny grace across the sky, falling dizzyingly, wind through wings. 

A frog, crouched like a twist of mint in the mud, sprang and dodged the talons, but oh, not the dreamer! She slid into it like a second skin, sprawled in the cool mind, and lived, in the brief moment, all its thoughts, its sights, its fears—fish mouths wide again tadpole slimness, talons like knives from above—savoring the tight, shivery taste of them before pushing herself on.

The rhythmic cry of a cricket, and the dreamer settled in tightly, played herself like a violin, before the music grew dull to her as well. 

Onward, onward, she rushed and rushed, intangible on the breeze, seeking, hopping, mind to mind to mind to find what amusement she could on the cool, still night. The forest exhausted, too well known for her flighty, fidgety tastes, she passed into the town.

The streets lay still and the houses lay straight, all white-washed or painted, all regular and dull. She scoffed at them from inside a sleepy pidgen, all the neat little people and their grey little dreams. Then, carefully, one mind to the next, she sprang and danced, leaving inky wells behind her, nightmare-seeds behind each troubled brow. Children would wake crying, babies screaming, and adults sweating and trembling in their beds. 

Here, tentacles and bloody water! Here a cat like a mountain, claws sharp like swords! Here a spider, a snake, a big fat red F!

And then even their torment was boring, dull fears and small minds too tight around her. She slid out a window, through a window, the glass nothing around her smoke-light body, and let the breeze wrap around her again.

Nostalgia, for her younger days when her reach danced less far, forced her to keep near the town as she flew out. She sighed, and mapped the town through the ashen-rose tint of sweet memories, and the touch of sleeping minds when she reached down, dreams where there should be emptiness, was what sent her falling, through air, then shingles, then wooden boards into the woman who slept before the flickering television.

She dropped a corpse-cold kiss into her head, made the woman’s own mouth a rude smirk at her misfortunes, then sprung away before the nightmare could start, chasing herself upward, through the ceiling and down the hall, the call of another dreamer, an inferior dreamer, summoning her.

Through the door, which didn’t swing further open, or even creak as she slide through the crack, and into the room. And there, the dreamer froze, shocked, gasped with a mouth that wasn’t there, that made no sound. 

Dark hair spread over an uncovered pillow, dipped in silky curling whorls across plain cotton sheets. A mouth, plum and magenta, smiled in delicate sleep. Brown skin caught the moonlight, seemed to glow with it, a lovely sharp contrast between the pale bed around it. And the face, round and slack and sweet, as it caught the dreamer’s heart, tore at it inside her breast, miles and miles away.

The face she’d been seeking, unawares of it. Her heart pounded, threatened to pull her back, and she fought with a body she wasn’t inside, fought to control the terrible wonderful panicked joy of it.

Silver fingers, invisible, insubstantial, in between there and not, reached out, stroked a cool brown forehead, and pulled away. Nervous, she was nervous, and she dared not. In the House, the dreamer gasped, body arching, aching in her bed, and in the town, shadows cast paled, sweet gossamer tumbles to thin stretches of smoke, washed away in the moonlight that did fall here, all rose and cream. Those intangible lips, so bitter and harsh, pursed, went thin, then smiled tenderly, and whispered a single word.

A rushing silent crack as her heart exploded in her frail chest! The dreamer flew through the air, through the walls and the town and the forest and again into the attic, curling back into herself, hands fisted into ancient sheets, and gasping, wiped any words, any quiet exclamations off her lips. 

That word, that damning word, it came off black onto the back of her hand, lipstick smeared away, and she tried rubbed it off on the sheet, but it crawled again, crushed but there still, to her mouth. The dreamer hunched, eyes shut, mouthing it to herself over and over.

And under the sky, under the moon, twisted parallel in a different kind of anguish, Aradia slept, tossed her head, ears aching at the word, mouth smiling at it, teeth gleaming in the moonlight and she gasped and sighed and settled.

The word lay sticky on her skin, dried glimmering in the moonlight, an invisible tattoo. 

_Beloved_.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter One:  
> Non-Con: Rose Lalonde violates several people's minds without consent, and watches Aradia while she sleeps.  
> Please let me know if I haven't tagged/warned for anything you think should have a warning, and I'll be happy to add it.
> 
> I live [here](http://half-a-league.tumblr.com/) most of the time, feel free to come talk to me about anything (fic or not!).
> 
> My lovely proofreader lives [here](http://foxhatgirl.tumblr.com/)!


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